1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a card for simulating peripheral component interconnect (PCI) loads, and particularly to a card whose power can be adjusted as required.
2. Description of Related Art
In motherboard manufacturing, it is necessary to test motherboard stability, for example, when load power of the motherboard is maximal, it is necessary to test whether the motherboard is stable. The load may be a central processing unit (CPU), a hard disk drive (HDD), an optical disk drive (ODD), a floppy disk drive (FDD), or a certain PCI device, and so on.
There are two typical methods for testing motherboard stability. By one method, actual PCI devices are inserted in the corresponding slots of the motherboard. However, it is costly to use the actual PCI devices for testing. By the other method, a card for simulating a PCI load is inserted into the corresponding slot of the motherboard. However, since power dissipated by the card is fixed the motherboard cannot be tested under different load conditions.
What is needed, therefore, is a card with adjustable loads for simulating different PCI loads.